One prong of Trump’s aggressive assault on the status of Venezuelan immigrants was allowed to proceed on May 19th when the Supreme Court rescinded an order that had prevented the Trump administration from ending the Temporary Protected Status extended by the Biden administration to approximately 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants.
And then, a little over a week later on May 30th, the second prong of this assault was sanctioned when the Supreme Court authorized the Trump administration to revoke the provisional legal status of another group of Venezuelans along with a group of immigrants from Cuba and other countries.
What’s interesting about these particular developments, however, is that the Venezuelan community in South Florida, both citizens and non-citizens alike, have been some of Trump’s most devoted supporters. During the 2024 presidential election, for example, according to an El País analysis, up to 90% of Venezuelan American voters cast their vote for Trump. In fact, according to a Washington Post article, “Trump’s most dramatic inroads with Latino voters were made in the Miami suburb of Doral, where roughly 40 percent of the city’s residents have Venezuelan roots.” Even when Venezuelans weren’t eligible to vote, as noted in the article, they “attended rallies, decorated their front lawns with Trump flags, and took to social media to support the man they thought would prioritize removing Nicolás Maduro from power.”
This overwhelming support clearly suggests to me that many Venezuelan Americans apparently didn’t mind Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda when they thought that it would primarily target Mexican immigrants.
I guess it’s worth mentioning, at this point, that Trump’s efforts to deport Mexican immigrants have, to date, fallen woefully short of his, or at least Stephen Miller’s, lofty expectations. Updated statistics are pending and deportations appear to be accelerating, but it turns out, as recently reported, that the Trump administration has actually managed to deport fewer Mexican immigrants than the Biden administration did during this same interval of time in 2024.
In any case, given recent developments, it certainly seems like many Venezuelans, whether citizens or not, are now feeling somewhat conflicted about Trump.
In the words of Adelys Ferro, the director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, Venezuelans feel ‘beyond betrayed.’ Prior to the election, according to Ferro, ‘elected officials from the Republican party’ had provided explicit assurances that Venezuelan immigrants granted T.P.S. would be protected. She has now acknowledged, however, that Venezuelan Americans were duped and ‘used once again to win votes’ and ‘consolidate Republican hegemony’ in Florida.
The distinguished Argentine‑born journalist, Andres Oppenheimer, echoed this sentiment in an editorial appearing in the Miami Herald. In the piece, he characterized Trump’s revocation of the Temporary Protected Status extended by the Biden administration as a betrayal of the Venezuelan exile community, adding that he could not “remember another U.S. president in recent history turning his back on such an enthusiastic constituency so quickly.”
I might be wrong, but it seems like it’s finally starting to dawn on some of these Latinos for Trump that ‘Papi Trump,’ as he is affectionately referred to in the Venezuelan community, is not someone to be trusted.
In any case, as a Mexican American, it’s difficult for me to feel any sympathy for the plight of the Venezuelan immigrant community at this point. In fact, the only thought that really comes to mind when I consider their current predicament is “good riddance.”
It doesn’t exactly take an incredible leap of imagination to envision the Venezuelan American community evolving into something very similar to the Cuban American community which has functioned as a perennial source of support for the Republican party and, in the process, has effectively repudiated any meaningful alliances with even conservative elements of the Mexican American community.
Political figures like Sen. Ted Cruz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio serve, at least to the more astute among us, as stark reminders of the implacable divisions and antipathies that endure between Cuban Americans and Mexican Americans.
Speaking of Cuban Americans, all of their kneeling over the years hasn’t exactly exempted Cuban immigrants from the wrath of Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Cuban Americans have traditionally enjoyed a very privileged position within the U.S. immigration system.
But, as recent developments seem to indicate, the so-called Cuban ‘privilege’ appears to have finally met its demise. The beginning of the end began, as noted in an El País article, when President Bill Clinton implemented the “wet foot, dry foot” policy in 1996. Although this policy, described as “the first major limitation” on the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, continued to extend protections to Cubans who managed to reach U.S. soil, it explicitly “mandated the repatriation of those intercepted at sea.”
The privilege was further eroded in 2017 when President Barack Obama during the waning days of his administration categorically ended the policy by executive order.
Of course, when Trump assumed the presidency for the first time less than two weeks later, he could have chosen to rescind Obama’s executive order and reinstate the “wet foot, dry foot” policy. He didn’t.
And then, to just finish connecting the dots on these developments, most recently in March, the Department of Homeland Security announced its decision to revoke the temporary humanitarian parole for Cubans which had ironically been implemented by the Biden administration. Although the order was halted initially by a district court, that block was eventually lifted, as mentioned earlier, by the Supreme Court on May 30th allowing Trump to resume the large-scale deportation of Cuban immigrants to the “shock” of “2.4 million Cuban-Americans, who strongly backed the Republican twice and have long enjoyed a place of privilege in the U.S. immigration system.”
And, since then, there have been several notable incidents reflecting this difficult new reality for Cubans.
Hector Luis Valdes Cocho, a prominent Latinos for Trump leader, for example, was reportedly detained by ICE and is, at last check, in a detention facility awaiting deportation.
Pro-Trump Cuban Rapper, Eliéxer Márquez Duany, also known as “El Funky,” is also facing possible deportation. Although the Miami Herald has reported that his immigration case has been reopened after the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) initially denied his petition for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, his status has, to date, still not been definitively resolved. In his particular case, deportation is also likely to result in a lengthy term of imprisonment in Cuba due to his participation in anti-government activity on the embattled island.
Another incident that seems to have garnered a lot of online attention recently is the case of Yanet Correa who has been referred to by Angel de la Rosa, an emerging Mexican American content creator, as the “famous Trump singing lady.” There’s widely circulated video footage of Mrs. Correa, a once and possibly still enthusiastic Trump supporter, emotionally denouncing the ‘injusticia’ of her husband’s expedited deportation order.
In fact, the situation in South Florida has become so untenable that even normally obsequious Cuban American legislators are now feeling compelled to register their disapproval of Trump’s treatment of Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants.
In a post on X dated June 7th, for example, State Sen. Ileana Garcia of Florida, a Miami Republican, the daughter of Cuban exiles, and a co-founder of the group Latinas for Trump, condemned Trump’s mass-deportation campaign as “unacceptable and inhumane.”
In another sign of mounting frustration with the Trump administration on this issue, a small group of Republican lawmakers from South Florida have openly criticized the administration’s move to strip hundreds of thousands of Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants of deportation protections provided under President Biden’s T.P.S. and humanitarian parole programs.
As reported in a recent New York Times article, the “objections from Representatives María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Gimenez and Mario Díaz-Balart — whose families fled Cuba after Fidel Castro gained power — were an unusual instance of dissent by congressional Republicans, who have rarely deviated from Mr. Trump’s policies, especially when it comes to his hardline immigration agenda.”
Although the language of the joint statement issued by the South Florida delegation was characterized in the article as “fairly muted and carefully worded,” it does seem to indicate some nascent level of dissent by these otherwise deferential Cuban American lawmakers.
In an attempt to mitigate the challenging situation now facing both Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, one of the lawmakers mentioned above, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Florida, along with Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, recently reintroduced a bipartisan immigration reform bill called the Dignity Act of 2025 which Salazar once referred to on Fox News as “revolutionary.”
Salazar and Escobar had co-sponsored a version of this legislation before in May of 2023.
Escobar had referenced the new proposal in the days leading up to its reintroduction in an opinion piece featured on El Paso Matters and then again on a recent edition of ABC-7 Xtra.
The previous version was apparently lost in a wilderness of House committees, so I am certainly wishing the two lawmakers the best of luck with what is a rare instance of bipartisan cooperation on this issue. They’re certainly going to need it in this MAGA-infested Congress.
And it’s not just Republicans who are suddenly attentive to the deteriorating immigration situation for Cubans and Venezuelans. Democrats in Miami-Dade County have smelled blood in the water on this issue. In April, two giant billboards were erected by a group of Democrats along freeways in Miami referring to Rubio, Díaz-Balart, Salazar, and Giménez as ‘traitors’ to the Cuban American community for ‘failing to protect tens of thousands of migrants from Trump’s immigration policies.’
A Miami-based non-profit organization aligned with Democrats called Keep Them Honest, Inc., similarly launched a paid ad campaign targeting the same group of Cuban American politicians.
I, for one, have always been rather skeptical of the notion of pan-Latino unity of any kind. I have argued previously, for example, that it is misguided and ultimately counterproductive for Mexican Americans to presume the existence of a sense of solidarity among the various disparate segments of the larger Latino population.
The hostility to Mexican immigration espoused by many Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans as demonstrated by their steadfast support of Trump, however wavering it may appear at this point, clearly seems to, once again, validate my position.
So, all things considered, I don’t necessarily see the lawful deportation of Venezuelans or Cubans as a problem that Mexican Americans should be particularly concerned about at this point. Our efforts, in my opinion, would be better spent defending Mexican immigrants from Trump’s campaign of terror and intimidation.
So, all I can really think to say, at this point, to those unfortunate Latinos and Latinas for Trump who now find themselves in Trump’s crosshairs is, “Be careful what you wish for” and “¡Vayan con Dios, amigos!”
Cover photo: President Donald Trump. Huntington Beach, CA – March 25 2017: Make America Great Again March. Supporters and protesters of republican president Donald Trump, cheer and jeer at a MAGA March in Huntington Beach. President Trump Supporters. — Photo by Mike Ledray
